


The Other Days

by JoAsakura



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 17:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9395465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: The shorter fics for Reaper76 Week that I originally just posted on Tumblr ^_^





	1. Dance (Day 3, At Your Back)

 

Trust/ ~~Betrayal~~

It almost feels like old times, a dance neither of them has forgotten the moves to.

Gabriel turns, flows like dark water around the Jack's constantly moving form, shotguns booming, bass counterpoint to the sharp crack of the pulse rifle. The shotguns are short range, and Gabriel's clearing the enemies nearby as they move together, Jack picking off their shared enemies on the nearby rooftops with an accuracy that would make Ana proud.

Step, twirl, they trade positions without words as they move towards an entranceway and Jack ratchets out the empty ammo generator with one hand while blind-handing it's replacement as he looks for enemies.

Step, twirl and Gabriel's scanning the dark maw of the cavern's opening with senses Jack's visor can't hope to replicate as behind him, the pulse rifle starts to sing again. Beyond the sex, beyond the arguments as their relationship grew cold and thin as early-spring ice, this is what he missed. The two of them unutterably, unassailably *at each other's backs* instead of their throats.

If Gabriel Reyes was a gambling man, he'd bet Jack felt the same way.

There's a shift in the dance and suddenly Jack is out of rhythm, shoving Gabriel out of the way as a momentary burst of light flares in his peripheral vision. A turret, sharp-chattering talking over the conversation of their own weapons, and the pulse rifle kicks back hard as Jack unloads a barrage of helix rockets at the target.

It's down with a satisfying explosion in the next second, but Jack's on one knee, weapon hissing hot in his hands, and Gabriel sees the blood drooling out under white leather and black Kevlar where bullets found their way past armour into flesh.

"Goddamnit, Morrison." Reaper says, not Gabriel, because Gabriel Reyes is panicking just a little bit behind that dead white mask as he drags them both to cover. "I can take those kind of his better than a senile old man like you can. Stupid shit like that jeopardizes the mission and...."

"Calm down, Hot Topic. It's just.. ngh.. old habits die hard." Jack hisses behind the blank facade of his visor. "It's not bad. Couple bandaids, maybe you can kiss it better when we find the prize at the bottom of this box of shit cracker jacks."

"Last time I checked, the blood was supposed to stay on the inside of your body, boyscout, or did you fail that merit badge?" He's already opening Jack's battered jacket, feeling for the biotic field generators he knows are stashed inside. The fact that Jack doesn't flinch as metal claws skitter cold against his bloody skin is a testament to the trust he's placed in their truce. Of the trust he still has for Gabriel, as fractional and fragile as it might be. "This would be the perfect chance for me to do you in, and I could blame it all on these LumeriCo assholes." He adds, setting the field generator down, and feeling the golden warmth envelop them both.

"Are you?" Jack asks, prodding a through-and-through with absent distaste as he scans for more combatants.

"No." Gabriel says after a moment, trying to still his fussing hands.

"You still gonna kiss it and make it better when we get back?" It's impossible to tell, but Gabriel is sure Jack is grinning underneath that mask.

"Don't push your luck, Morrison." He flows in a column of black smoke to standing, but he still offers Jack his hand. "This is just a truce, remember?"

"Right. Truce. Don't worry. I got your back." Jack grunts as he gets himself upright.

"And I got yours."

 


	2. The Numbers Station (Day 5, "Over the Airwaves")

Voice/Music

The soldier doesn't carry much beyond a fifty pound experimental cannon, a battered motorcycle jacket and that damnable visor. A crumpled pack of Gauloises, five rechargable cores for the pulse rifle, a sewing kit. A tube of super glue. A passport and other forms of ID belonging to Jacob King (These last items he never uses unless it's an emergency. Jake is the only backstopped identity Talon's attack didn't burn, and he can't risk losing that one too).

He doesn't bother with ammo for the sidearm, he can steal 9-mil rounds wherever he goes, same with booze and painkillers to manage the pain the visor brings every time he plugs it into his brain.

But his favourite thing, if he allows himself that luxury, is the old wideband radio. A relic from the Crisis, Jack's never been able quite let it go.

Sitting in a barren loft, he swigs back a half-finished bottle of Popov he found in a dumpster and nurses a few drags off his remaining Gauloises while he checks out the channels on the old radio.

There's some pirate station playing omnic speed metal, a group of kids in the Netherlands with a 24-hour station that plays the same five fucking songs from the Buzzcocks over and over again. A guy ranting in Romanian about aliens.

He slides across the dial, past some Sahara blues and a country twang in a language he doesn't understand, when he hears it. "...of 76."

He freezes at the flat mechanical voice. "The summer of 76." It repeats in a hail of static a minute later.

(The Summer of 76. TS76) Jack unconsciously rubs the tattoo at the base of his skull. The codes they'd come up with during the war, Ana had given the two of them so much abuse for what she'd called the "cryptographic equivalent of calvinball". He knows the tinkling music that comes next, a recording of Gabriel's grandmother's music box. And then numbers.

Jack frantically rummages in his bag for a chewed off stump of a pencil and starts scrawling the numbers on the back of the cigarette pack. The music box meant coordinates, and as he fills up the cardboard, his scarred face pulls into a frown.

He knows these coordinates, crackling out in that flat, flat voice.

Geneva.

A woman's voice warbling an old song. "You are my sunshine..."

(Jack, come to me.)

But Gabriel is dead. Jack felt his cold, dead hand in his own after he'd crawled through the ruins of headquarters, shattered throat raw from screaming his name. Gabriel was dead because of him.

And...

"The Summer of 76" The tinny voice crackles out again, before static fills the little speaker.

Gabriel was dead, and calling him back to where Jack Morrison had ended.

The gauloise burns down in his fingers as he sits in the drafty little room, listening to the background noise of the universe. "Ok, Gabe." He takes one last drag, burning it down to the filter and grinds it out under the bottle of vodka. "I'm coming home."

 


End file.
